Chapter 309 - 173: Money Fish_4
The main reason is that the fish Lin Yang is serving was just caught, ensuring the absolute best in freshness.
"Mmm, indeed it’s not bad." Taking a piece of Yellow Sea Bream into his mouth, Lin Yang nodded as he ate.
In fact, whether it’s freshwater or saltwater fish, what you’re eating first and foremost is the freshness, which generally can only be guaranteed by a living fish. Even the tastiest fish, once frozen, will have a significantly worse texture.
Well... that isn’t to say without exception. For example, large tunas can’t be eaten fresh because their muscles are very well-developed. So, they have to be treated like beef, subjected to low-temperature freezing to remove the acids before they can taste good.
However, such fish are the minority. Most fish have white flesh, which doesn’t require acid removal, so maintaining their liveliness is critical. Even the most delicious freeze-caught wild fish doesn’t taste as good as a living farmed one.
Of course, if all fish are alive, or have died less than two hours ago, wild fish utterly trounce farmed fish by a long shot in terms of flesh quality, not even in the same league.
Actually, purely in terms of taste, Yellow Sea Bream and Black Seabream don’t rank very high among sea fish.
Among what Lin Yang knows, there’s a fish called Shajian along the southeastern coast of our country that is recognized as the tastiest. Note it’s Shajian, not Sardine. Its scientific name is Many-scaled Sculpin, which has the reputation for being the tastiest sea fish.
Unfortunately, he hasn’t had the chance to try it yet. But thinking about it now, he might give it a shot during this time.
Following the Many-scaled Sculpin, the second best-tasting fish is commonly acknowledged to be Ma You, scientifically known as the Four-fingered Horse Mackerel. In many places in Guangdong Province, it is also called ’Wuyu’ or ’Ma Wu’. It can be found in the Indian Ocean and the western part of the Pacific Ocean, and it’s not particularly expensive, but the taste is indeed exceptional.
In popular sayings ’First Wuyu, second White Pomfret, third and fourth Ma plus...’, the Wuyu referred to here is the Ma You.
The third acknowledged tastiest sea fish should be White Pomfret, also known as Silver Pomfret. Some people sell Yan Chang as Silver Pomfret because they look similar, but the taste is quite inferior.